UK Enterprise 2020

18 | UK Enterprise Awards 2020 Maternity Mum is a maternity nurse agency, which specialises in supplying experienced maternity nurses to new parents. Recognised for providing specialists in post-natal services to meet all of their clients requirements, we profiled Maternity Mum to discover more about how they earned themselves the title of Best Maternity Nurse Agency 2020 in the recent UK Enterprise Awards. Best Maternity Nurse Agency of the Year 2020 Jun20300 The bespoke agency was founded in 2016 by Cheryl Foster, who has worked as both a midwife and a maternity nurse for more than an impressive twenty years. Throughout her extraordinary career, Cheryl has accumulated extensive education and experience in caring for new mothers, and also loves being able to foster and nurture the relationships between mother and baby. As a mother herself, Cheryl is able to be empathetic and has the benefit of having first-hand experience which helps her in supporting those in her care. At Maternity Mum, the agency has a number of maternity nurses who specialise in a diverse range of fields, which include breastfeeding, sleep training, weaning, twins, reflux, colic, tongue tie, bottle refusal and premature babies. In other words, there is truly no area of maternity care that they cannot help with. The agency also provides consultancy services, both online and offline, for any issues regarding breastfeeding and sleep training. In addition, they also offer overseas maternity nurses, either for those who are travelling overseas or for clients who live abroad. All of the maternity nurses that Maternity Mum supply are vetted and reference check, with fully up to date DBS checks and relevant qualifications in paediatric first aid. All of Maternity Mum’s maternity nurses are experts at taking care of babies and keeping up with the latest changes in the field, as well as engage actively in continuous professional development to ensure their standards do not drop. They are able to offer their clients 24 hour live in maternity nurses, as well as day and night maternity nurses. All of their maternity nurses are self- employed and take bookings ranging from one day up to six months, giving prospective clients all the flexibility required to meet their needs. They also may have either a medical or an educational background depending on the requirements that the client has. The staff at Maternity Mum all have an in depth knowledge of the needs of their clients, as well as the role of a maternity nurse. This enables matching a nurse with a client a much simpler and efficient process. The clients that Maternity Mum has are predominantly new parents who require support and guidance following the birth of their child or children. Their maternity nurses are able to meet clients as soon as they are discharged from the hospital and are experts at helping the baby settle in their new homes. They have wide range of clients from single parents, same sex parents, surrogates, first time parents and new parents who need to return work shortly after the birth. In a nutshell, Maternity Mum helps any new parent who is in need of professional help and support with their new child. Maternity Mum’s often receives urgent requests from clients, which they are able to provide support for. These requests can range from sleep deprivation, to colic, or issues when breastfeeding. As such, the agency always ensure that they find the right maternity nurse to meet these needs, and they will do is as quickly as possible. In the gap between finding the right maternity nurse and the client’s request, Maternity Mum is on hand to give practical advice and emotional support. One of the most important values which Cheryl and her team adhere to, is that each client is unique and no situation is the same. Parents have different styles of parenting and different routines and schedules they set, which is why the maternity nurses need to be able to adapt to all of this. There are also health issues that need to be taken into consideration, such as postnatal depression. In order to do this, Maternity Mum take into the account the needs of the client and carefully matches them with a maternity nurse with the right qualifications and experience. It is key that they provide the best possible service to every single one of their clients. Client satisfaction is something that is massively important to Maternity Mum, and the endless positive testimonials both on their website and on Facebook are proof that the service they offer is an excellent one. Another part of Maternity Mum’s philosophy is ensuring that their maternity nurses are engaged with the agency by asking to hear their opinions, and making them feel like a valued part of the organisation. There is resource page on their website which gives their maternity nurses access to information that they need to continue their own education and development. Here they can find various topics covered including, CPD opportunities, insurance and DBS information as well as other useful reading materials. This platform provides their maternity nurses with opportunities to better themselves, something which is great benefit to both the agency as a whole as well as the clients that provide care for. As for the agency’s competition, many of Maternity Mum’s competitors are not specialists in supplying maternity nurses, instead they offer a vast range of household staff without having the specialism that Cheryl and her staff are able to offer. Cheryl is both a qualified and experienced maternity nurse and is therefore able to offer a better and more personalised service that is a better fit for the needs of her clients, especially in such an important stage of their lives. Additionally, some of their competitors also charge a registration or a joining fee for their time, but this is not something that Maternity Mum does. They do not charge a fee for anyone to either register or search with them, they only introduce their fees once clients secure a booking with one of their maternity nurses. The agency introductory fees that they offer are also competitive. In recent months, much like many other businesses, Maternity Mum has seen a dramatic decrease in the bookings they have received during the current pandemic and lockdown. They have been able to counter this by offering their services remotely, making tools to help new parents available online. In addition to proving online services, the agency have also reduced fees, or even made some of these remote services complimentary, so they can continue providing the best possible service to those who need it. As we move out of lockdown and as the world